A tale of two Predators

Once upon a time, there was a young and upcoming filmmaker by the name of Robert Rodriguez who, flush from the success of his no-budget Spanish-language debut and its subsequent sequel/re-make, was asked by the Twentieth Century Fox studio to write a follow-up to the original Predator film, keeping with the jungle premise from the first one. The young director’s films had a real vim and vigour about them and what they lacked in a cohesive plot, they more than made up for with their real sense of fun and excitement.

The great and powerful Austrian giant Arnold Schwarzenegger (star of the original film) decided against being in the next one, and so the script was resigned to a shelf where it sat for many, many years, only to be dusted off by the young filmmaker, who was now a fully-fledged big-name director. He agreed to have it re-written and produced the film himself through his own company, for the all powerful Fox studio.

And they all lived happily ever after……… except they didn’t.

Although handing the directing chores over to one of his loyal servants, the film had none of the quirkiness or imagination which characterised the director’s own work. What had been assembled instead was a ‘Mcfilm’ which the faraway land of Hollywood was becoming increasingly good at churning out. There was no actual real human interaction or dialogue spoken between the actors - all they did was spout exposition back and forth for the film’s duration (one of them even resorting to the age-old cliché of showing a picture of his cute kids to his comrades, before succumbing to the alien).

Some fans of the original decided to come out and support the new film anyway, regardless to how bad it was. Most, having seen District 9 the previous summer, knew that you could still make an exciting genre picture with a relatively low budget and not have to resort to making an uninspired retread of the original (with the added bonus of having three extra Predators!)

Some couldn’t give a shit if the film did or didn’t stand up to the original, a film which they had enjoyed as children – they just want to be entertained for 90 minutes.

The end.